jeffrey wolf

I had a list of graves I wanted to visit, and I found every single one of them.

Several of the gravestones in the Sobernheim Jewish cemetery already had rocks on them and others lay empty some bore the names of Wolf or Fried. The thing with stones is that you have no idea how long they’ve been there. At least with flowers, you have some idea, but they do not last as long. Most of the ground around the graves was filled with tiny black rocks, but white, gray, and more were among them as well. Possibly stones brought by others and knocked off the graves by the wind, snow, or rain. When I left, I made sure all the gravestones of my ancestors had at least one stone on them.​

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When my wife Alice first told me she might have to go to Frankfurt, Germany for work, I very quickly looked up how far it was from Sobernheim. It was only about an hour southwest. When Alice got confirmation she was to go to the area in early April, it was my brother, Brad, who finally convinced me I should tag along, if only to see Sobernheim. We know the Wolf family lived there in the mid-to-late 1800s, starting with Daniel Wolf when he opened a butcher shop near the center of town. The town is now called Bad Soberheim, renamed after World War II because it was known as a center of healing. The word bad means bath and is often use to indicate some sort of spa, which historically is for healing.

Historians believe people started living in Sobernheim as early as 3000 BC and settled in 600 BC. The name first appeared in documentation in 1074, with people earning livelihoods in agriculture, forestry, and winegrowing. The first mention of Jews in Sobernheim is in 1301. We also know Jews were murdered there during the Black Plague in 1348 and 1349.

The Black Plague is one reason so many Jews lived in Eastern Europe before WWII. It is hard for us to comprehend just how catastrophic the disease was not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East and Asia, including China. From 1346 to 1353, the disease killed 50% of the population in Europe alone, approximately 50 million people. In some cities like Florence, historians believe eight out of 10 people died. Think about the 10 people you most often interact with each day and now eight are gone. With devastation like that, it must have felt like the end of the world. Lacking an understanding of what caused this seemingly random disease, those of the Christian faith often blamed the Jews.

In addition to religious reasons for the scapegoating and false accusations, many Jews were less affected than other people because they chose not to use common wells in towns and cities. Moreover, some Jews were coerced to confess to poisoning wells through torture. By 1349, massacres of Jews spread across Europe. Around 2,000 Jews were burnt alive on Valentine’s Day in Strasbourg, where the plague had not even arrived yet. The Jewish community in Frankfurt was annihilated, as were the populations in Cologne and Mainz, where 3,000 Jews lived.

During the Black Plague, Poland was one of the most tolerant places in Europe for Jews, the royalty there allowing them to live free from persecution. Borders were fluid for the next several hundred years, so Jews started occupying more and more of Eastern Europe. This is why so many lived there when the Nazis rose to power.

For a long time, Christian society often limited what jobs Jews could perform. Since early Catholics could not lend or deal with money (early Christian doctrine prohibited usury, which is the practice of charging interest on loans and a sin), they forced Jews to be moneylenders or tax collectors. This is likely the origin of the stereotype of the money hoarding, miserly Jew. Some of the earliest Jews in Sobernheim were moneylenders.

Sorry about all this history, but it is helpful for context.

Much of the jobs the Wolf family had in Sobernheim or Seesbach, where they lived before Sobernheim, are lost to time. But we know Daniel Wolf, my grandfather's grandfather, was a butcher because of a picture that shows him in front of a building.

In German, it says butcher shop of Daniel Wolf. Several years ago, a family friend went to Sobernheim because his grandmother lived near there. He was able to determine the address of the old butcher shop. And so, it came to be another on my list of places to visit in this small German town.

​My plan was to visit the former synagogue first. The Sobernheim synagogue was built in 1858 on a piece of land where once stood a barn. In 1904 it was renovated and expanded, and in 1930, the town added a memorial tablet to the fallen from Sobernheim in WWI. On Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938, the Nazis demolished and desecrated the synagogue. The prayer books were burnt, but someone managed to save the Torah scrolls. The WWI memorial tablet was also destroyed. In 1939, the building was sold to the town and almost turned into a gymnasium. The Wehrmacht used it instead as storage during WWII. After the war, the building was used for furniture storage and was almost torn down in 1971. The town reacquired the building in 2001 and began repairs. In 2003, the first Jewish religious service in 65 years took place in the synagogue. It is now the Kulturhaus Synagogue, a library to the town which displays some of the history of the building.

When I arrived, I went through the gate and tried the door. It was locked, but when I looked inside, I could see a woman walking around, so I knocked. It could be because I had already put on a yarmulke, or just because she was friendly, but the woman came right over and opened the door.

“Are you open?” I asked.

“No, but we can be,” she replied and let me right in.

I started to explain why I was there, and she spoke enough English to follow me. Since I knew the addresses of two of the places I was going to visit, and the other was on the map, I asked about the mystery picture first.

We have these pictures of Daniel’s family in front of a house that is definitely not the butcher shop. After research with my mom, we found another photo of a town skyline and there was a long house in it marked with the words, “Home where Papa was born.” I wanted to find that house. The librarian looked closely and could not immediately place it. I started to show her other pictures, including the one of the butcher shop, and told her the address: Saarstrasse 8. She looked at the picture closely and for the first of two times that day, a person from the area looked at it and I could see recognition in her eyes. It was real. She knew the building. I started taking pictures of the synagogue-now-library, including of a window that still contained a Star of David. She led me to where the ark used to be. It was now two large, closed doors. She opened them and inside it was lined with pictures and a torah sat at the bottom. The torah saved from Kristallnacht.

It was at that point I remembered to tell the woman my name and learned her name is Claudia. She explained that the photos inside were of people who belonged to the congregation. They all looked official, and she explained that most of the photos were from passports. The passports were hidden from the Nazis and found after the war. The people in the photos were gone.

At the start of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis, only about 80 Jews lived in Sobernheim. Some moved away and by Kristallnacht, only 45 were left. In 1942, the last 12 Jewish inhabitants were deported. According to a memorial book and Yad Vashem, 40 of the Jews from Sobernheim were murdered in the Holocaust. I do not believe any Jews live there now.

Claudia pointed to the other item original to the synagogue: a red banner that hung either over the ark doors, or directly over the torah. She said it survived because a woman buried it in her garden. She also showed me a painting of what the synagogue looked like in the earlier part of the 20th century. The artist was Alfred Marum, who belonged to the congregation, but served as a U.S. soldier in WWII. They also created a model of what the synagogue looked like before it was wrecked by the Nazis and they had the original plans for the synagogue on the wall.

Claudia asked me if I planned to visit the old Jewish cemetery in Sobernheim, the Judische Friedhof. I said yes and she told me it is normally locked, but she would call up the person with the key. That went to voicemail, so she called someone else. She also texted the picture of the “home where Papa was born” to her husband for help in identifying it.

I should say now that Germans are exceedingly friendly. They all want to be helpful. One time, Alice and I were stuck in a parking garage at the exit without coins or small enough bills to get out and it didn’t take credit cards. A guy in the line of cars behind us just gave us 5 euro and even paid the machine for us. I’ve thought a lot about this friendliness.

It could be that Germans are just generally kind. Or it could be because they are technically a conquered people, having lost both of the two largest wars in the history of the world. After talking with my neighbor, who had a German exchange student live with her for a year, I know Germans are friendly because it’s a reaction. Their predecessors committed one of the most horrific set of acts in the history of mankind. Now, Germans want everyone to know that’s not them. The way they talk about the Nazis is always as a separate group of people, calling them the Nazis, and it often accompanies the word thugs. The history of the Nazis in Germany is a burden they all must live with, probably for as long as there is a Germany. However, this general kindness makes Germany a lovely place to visit. It’s as if Germans cherish each new person they meet.

Claudia tells me that the second person she called would unlock the cemetery for me in an hour. Her husband also told her the “house where Papa was born” is not Sobernheim. The church steeples don’t match. According to a label on the image, which was in German so Mom and I didn’t know what it meant, it’s actually a German town called Sotern, several hours away. I didn’t leave Germany with many new mysteries, but this was one of them. It was not resolved until I told my parents and we believe it came from the Baum side of the family. Sotern is also near Bosen, where other parts of the family come from.

While Claudia was doing this research, she showed me a brief video about the history of the synagogue, specifically about Alfred Marum’s role in bringing it back. He also helped make sure the U.S. and other governments knew what the Nazis did during the Shoah.

During the video, the first person Claudia called rang back and said he could let me in the cemetery right away. I just needed to drive up to his house, number 15. His name is Herr Bohn, pronounced bone. The humor of a man named Mr. Bohn being the person who had access to a graveyard was not lost on me.

I bid farewell to Claudia. I wanted to hug her, but instead she shook hands. This person who was a complete stranger gave so much to me in under a half hour. I thanked her profusely and she waved goodbye until I went through the outside gate back onto the street. I drove up the hill and parked outside number 15. I rang the doorbell and an older man with gray hair and a moustache came to the door.

“Mister Wolf?”

“Herr Bohn?”

He told me to wait a moment, leaving me standing on his porch in the open doorway while he fetched the key. Then he led me up the hill next to his house and into the woods. The trees were green with spring as we trampled along a path and Herr Bohn asked about my family. I told him Hermann Wolf’s address in Sobernheim, 41 Grossstrasse. Herr Bohn checked a list and nodded, like it matched information he already had. I regret not thinking to ask him about that. Did he have a list of where the Jews lived in Sobernheim before the war?

At some point during the walk, I showed Herr Bohn that same photo of the butcher shop and he got that same look of recognition when I mentioned the address. He knew the building too. We turned a corner on the path and there it was: the cemetery.

Right outside of it was a clearing where you could look down on the heart of Sobernheim from the top of the hill. Before Herr Bohn walked to the gate so we could go into the graveyard, he told me three stories.

In the first, he explained to me how the Jews got the land for the cemetery. The area was originally used for the gallows to hang criminals. No one else in town wanted the land, so the Jews took it. With the second story, Herr Bohn explained how you could see the synagogue from the hill and the Jews would carry the bodies from there, over a small creek, and up to the hill for burial. The final story was about how in the spring, the sun shone on the gate of the cemetery first, and the first sight of green after winter was right there. As Herr Bohn unlocked the gate, he noted stones placed on the ground next to the entrance. These were from people who had come there and found it locked. He let me inside and led me to the war memorial. This was the memorial formerly located at the synagogue and put back together in 1950 by Alfred Marum. A message about WWII was also added to the memorial.

From there, Herr Bohn helped me find one of the names on my list: Sara Wolf. I placed a stone on top, and Herr Bohn thought another, previous visitor had placed the stone, but I explained to him it was me. He showed me that the gravestones in Jewish cemeteries in Germany often have two sides. One side is in Hebrew and the other side is in German. He also pointed out a stone that was cracked in half by Nazi thugs but repaired later.

At that point, Herr Bohn told me he would leave me to do the rest of my searches and I could relock the gate when I left. We shook hands and I thanked him repeatedly. It took me a minute to figure it out but using the memorial and a map of the graveyard my mom had given me, I found all the gravestones belonging to our family. As Jews do, I placed small rocks on top of the markers. They came from my backyard, as well as my brother’s and my parents’. Some of the gravestones were in good condition, like Daniel Wolf’s, and others were barely readable. After placing the stones, I sang the Sh’ma and the Shehecheyanu, and recited the Mourner’s Kaddish. When I left the cemetery, I only had a few stones left – three or four – and those were for other graves in a different cemetery. Somehow, even though my brother, my father, and I all picked up a random amount, I had exactly the right number.

I drove back down to the heart of Sobernheim and ate lunch in a café right on the town square. Just a few yards up the street, I found what used to be the butcher shop. Hermann worked there until the 1930s when Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses forced him to close. He died in 1940. Many of my other relatives would perish due to Nazi persecution.

I drove back down to the heart of Sobernheim and ate lunch in a café right on the town square. Just a few yards up the street, I found what used to be the butcher shop. Hermann worked there until the 1930s when Nazi boycotts of Jewish businesses forced him to close. He died in 1940. Many of my other relatives would perish due to Nazi persecution.

The Wolf family is really the story of the Holocaust. Sadly, our family members were an example of what happened to most families during the Shoah. Sara Wolf, one of Daniel Wolf’s daughters, and her husband, Hermann Hersch, both perished in Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic.

Hugo Wolf, the son of Karl Wolf, Daniel Wolf’s brother, died in 1943 at the death camp Sobibor. That year is when there was a mass breakout and 300 Jews escaped Sobibor. They killed some SS guards and then made a run for it over a minefield while being shot at by machine guns. Only about 60 of the 300 lived to the end of the war. I don’t know if Hugo died during the escape, but maybe he got to try. After the escape, the Nazis completely destroyed the death camp so the approaching Soviet army would not know what they had done.

Another of Daniel’s daughters, Marta Wolf Sonderman and her daughter Frieda, were sent to Riga, Lativa to live in the ghetto there until they died in 1942. One of Daniel’s sons, Arthur Wolf, died in Chelmno where the Nazis first started using gas to murder Jews. They would lock Jews in a van and pump the exhaust inside. Klara Wolf, daughter of Daniel’s brother Karl, died in Auschwitz, as did other members of the family.

Daniel’s family likely lived over the butcher shop, but Hermann and his family lived a two-minute walk away. I went there too, but the original building was gone. Who knows for what reason, but Sobernheim did suffer damage from Allied air raids in WWII. Now, a new apartment building is there. The former butcher shop is now a home care company and was empty, closed. A sign on the door said appointments by arrangement only. I didn’t realize how nice all Germans are at that point, so I didn’t even think to send an email and ask for an appointment.

I bid Sobernheim farewell, so grateful I got to be there and headed for Seesbach. Daniel’s father and much of the family also came from this other small German town a 15-minute drive away. The Seesbach Jewish cemetery, Judische Friedhof, is located at the edge of a residential neighborhood, right across the street from a house. The gate was locked, but so separated from the fence I could walk around it. Like the Sobernheim cemetery, there are many empty areas where gravestones used to be. However, Seesbach only has about 10 stones left. I located the grave for Benjamin Wolf and then another one that also seemed to be for Benjamin Wolf and one of his wives, Sara Stiefel. Another new mystery. My parents and I don’t know if one of the Benjamin’s was another relative with the same name – Jews tend to reuse names – or a grave for his other wife, who was the mother of Daniel and Karl. The text on the stones was too faint to read.

I left my last stones on both. I sang the Sh’ma and Shehecheyanu again and recited the Mourner’s Kaddish while looking at this beautiful road across the road from the cemetery. Then I got back in the car and left. Both cemeteries were peaceful and comforting. I’m not sure if there really are spirits or something after we pass away, but if there are, I’d like to think those whose graves I left stones upon were comforted, thankful, and happy with my visit. And now they know: We survived.